From the Land of Lost Content may well be the last book to describe the Tibet of old - that remote and romantic land before ten years of Chinese oppression drove the inhabitants to revolt and the Dalai Lama to exile. In 1959, on Tibet's South-Eastern border, Chime, youthful leader of the Khambas - Tibet's only warrior tribe, set out on an epic march to Lhasa at the head of his followers to urge the equally youthful Dalai Lama to lead an effective revolt against the Chinese. The Dalai Lama was caught in an agonizing dilemma: all he believed in and stood for forbade the spilling of blood, even the blood of his enemies; yet to refuse an official Chinese invitation to Peking would invite the worst reprisals, while to accept would leave his people leaderless - for it was unlikely he would be allowed to return. Realizing the hopelessness of his situation and sensing the rebellious mood of his people, he made a dramatic escape from the Royal Palace.There follows a vivid account of armed resistance in Lhasa. Not all Tibetan were heroes, some even turned traitor. But where heroism was needed it was found, as in the case of an elderly hunchback, who single-handed, kept three mortars firing at a large force of Chinese - and lived to get away; or the party who fought off the Dalai Lama at the river crossing, beyond which lay India and safety.

From the Land of Lost Content, Noel Barber, Srishti Publishers, 224 pages, $12.99